We’re lucky to work on all the topics that stretch the energy sector: Energy-as-a-Service, Vulnerable Energy Consumers, EV-Charging and Smart Grids (DSR, DSM, P2P, V2G etc).
As renewable energy generation grows, matching available electricity supply to consumers’ demands gets harder.
We looked at how Electric vehicles could help to balance the grid by testing DSR with domestic EV users. Can this fit into people’s lives? Or will they reject it if it takes away their control?
Back when smart heating controls first came to market government wanted see how easy they were to use to inform their policies.
We use 80% of our energy at home for heating and hot water. This produces 20% of our carbon emissions. We need to give people the heat they want without the carbon. So, back in 2013, we built a team of leading academics and consultants to understand how people use heat at home.
Back in 2014 we were early on our journey to find out how to decarbonise heating. Businesses were starting to launch smarter heating controls. We wanted to find out how people used them.
60,000 electric vehicles were bought in UK last year. We interviewed electric car drivers to see what they thought about letting energy suppliers control their charging.
Millions of households live with illnesses made worse by the cold. What if you could prescribe a warm home to them? We thought we’d try this out by prototyping a smart energy service for households suffering from a cold-related chronic illness.
In May 2018 we fielded a team of UX and Service Designers to attend Octopus Energy’s ‘OctoHack’ event where the focus was novel applications of the Agile tariff API.
If you’re going big to trial Heat as a Service you’re going to need your own zonal-controller.
We gathered the best in the industry to run a 1-day bootcamp-style hackathon where this super-team developed a free open-source tool to score and publicly test solutions to UK fuel poverty.
Want to understand how different EV users charge their vehicles?
We have created five personas based on want consumers want from electric vehicle charging and demand-side response.
We conducted a bespoke four-day design sprint with Big Clean Switch to help them design, build and test a digital platform that allows energy customers to make informed choices about their home energy improvements.
There’s growing interest in the idea that businesses could sell energy as a service. Confident we could sell Heat as a Service, we wanted to explore how to add Hot Water. We used a Design Sprint to see how far we could get in three days.
Government is investing £100m in smart local energy system innovation projects from 2019-22. The aim is to create high value jobs providing cleaner, cheaper renewable energy.
We collaborated with Ofgem to think about the future of energy and what policy change could look like.
Imagine people bought energy services, like a warm home, instead of units of fuel. Our consumer segmentation report is essential reading to developers of energy services.
To get the best out of a heat pump, you need to drive a little different. We built a concept UI that gives real users the kindest heat pump experience.
If we want consumers to take up new energy services they must first understand them. We looked into deciphering the language around Demand Side Response (DSR) with our Home Truths® panel.
If we are to reach net zero carbon emissions, businesses will have to play their part.
We set out to understand what businesses are trying to achieve through energy management and what their key needs are to determine what an energy management solution might look like and how demand-side response (DSR) could be part of this solution.
We collaborated with Bristol Energy to launch the UK’s first ever Heat Plan. Heat Plans allow people to pay for heating in ‘Warm Hours’ instead of traditional kilowatt hours.
It’s hard to relate the things we do at home to the energy we use. So we use models to relate behaviour to energy.
Come and see us for a friendly
chat over a cuppa.
Cannon House, 18 The Priory Queensway
Birmingham B4 6BS8
We love small print. Said nobody, ever.